


Trading in Sadness

by rosncrntz



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: Affairs, Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt, Revenge Sex, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:35:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24328894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosncrntz/pseuds/rosncrntz
Summary: When Alice Morgan shows up at Mark North’s doorstep, he invites her in. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t want to know why. The reason is too much to bear.When Mark North walks home with Zoe Luther, she invites him in. She knows why. It’s inevitable.SET IN S01 E04
Relationships: Alice Morgan/Mark North, John Luther/Zoe Luther, Mark North/Zoe Luther
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Trading in Sadness

Her gesture is crude, her meaning cruel, but her eyes are sad. Mark can’t help it. He’s a lawyer; he trades in sadness.

His bag hits the pavement (it feels heavier, suddenly) and he glances down the street. There’s a throbbing at his temple, like all the blood in his body is collecting in his brain and he’s swimming in it. He is anxious, perhaps, that glancing down the road he will spot Zoe’s car pulling up a few doors down. Early home from work like she sometimes is. She’ll step out, looking just as she had done that night, and he would fall in love all over again. He’d fall in love and she’d see him stood idly on the pavement outside their house with Alice Morgan of all people curled at his feet. And then he’d be fucked.

Or maybe he is already fucked, he thinks, and he is unable to bring himself to look back down to where Alice is hunched against the railings as he asks, quite steadily, “Would you like to come in?”

He has been here before; that question has already been asked.

“Would you like me to?” Alice replies, something vaguely provocative in the lilting of that voice of hers that Mark makes himself deaf to. Easier not to listen, sometimes.

“Would I ask?”

_“Would you like to come in?” Zoe had asked, turning back at the threshold. Nervous fingers picked at the paintwork on the doorframe. She asked the question with a sigh, as if she already knew this was a mistake, and Mark was sure that it almost was. Almost. And he almost refused. He almost waved a hand, said sorry but it was getting late, turned away and walked home. But he was still a bit drunk (she was too) and the yellow streetlight passed across her skin like amber. And her eyes were sad. He couldn’t help it when he nodded, half-shy like a whimpering teenager, and followed her up into the house. He traded in sadness._

“You know your way to the kitchen, I believe,” Mark says, closing the door behind them.

The sharp click of the latch and there it is: the lowlight in the hall and the smell of Zoe’s perfume in the house, and Mark is bleary-eyed. ‘Zoe’s been lying to you,’ Alice had said. After all the late nights and the stories and the messages and the sobbing. Zoe sobbing on the sofa night at night whilst he rocked her in his arms, laying long kisses on the top of her head, rubbing her shoulder and her back until the sounds stopped. All of it over John Luther. And, now, ‘Zoe’s been lying to you.’

Pressing his weight on the door for a moment is all he can do to keep himself from falling.

“Mark?”

“Yeah,” he wipes his eyes when he thinks she can’t see him, before turning around. He can stand more upright when he tries. He half expects to see Zoe once his vision clears, but no. Alice Morgan is stood in his hall, and he’d let her in. He must be mad.

If he wasn’t mad, the alternative was worse.

_She must be mad, he thought, standing in her hallway as she closed the door behind them. There was a long moment, after the latch had given a sharp click, when Zoe stood silently with her back to him. He could hear her breath thickening in the air._

_“Zoe?”_

Alice is waiting for him to lead the way. Her gaze narrows. Mark is struck by thoughts of reef sharks or lionesses, something which smells weakness like blood in the air. She must see it on him like a nosebleed. There’s a dull ache forming in the heel of his hand where he’s clenching. He doesn’t realise he’s doing it until the pain sets in.

She’s still waiting. Mark can only assume this is her idea of an act of good manners, of being a good guest, of being normal. He hooks the keys beside the door and notices that she’s looking at the photo frames climbing the stairs.

There is Zoe’s graduation. Then last Christmas. Then the picture of them in the Lake District last autumn in their puffer jackets. Then there was the photo Zoe had taken on that awful disposable camera in the middle of the restaurant on his birthday. Mark is trying to hide his face in that one; he’s looking down, but you can still see his smile above the purple brim of a wineglass. He could still hear her laugh behind the camera flash.

It feels oddly tender to have Alice look at these snapshots. He wants to tear them down. He’s seized with the reckless need to tear them from the wall. It’s too vulnerable. It’s like she’s poking at flesh or pulling back layers of skin.

_“And that’s John, yeah?” he asked, looking up the staircase to a photography of Zoe and a man he’d never met. Zoe was in white, of course; satin, soft, a bouquet of white lilies spilling from her grasp. She’s laughing at what the man has said to her, trying to hide her face by looking down but it only makes her look more demure. It would be sickening if he wasn’t so smitten. (Smitten, how pathetic.) The man in question is handsome, young, and Mark would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a pang of something akin to jealousy when he met the dark eyes in the photograph._

_“You’ve never met?” The question was polite, that’s all. She knew the answer. Of course, they’d never met; she didn’t want them to meet. She didn’t like Mark looking at that photo. She didn’t like the idea of them meeting. It was too vulnerable._

“Aren’t you worried about her coming home? I’d like to see how you’d explain that one.”

“Zoe’s working late tonight.” And, besides, there is no reason you shouldn’t be here. It’s not like we’re doing anything we shouldn’t be. We’re not doing things that adults don’t do.

He almost says this, but he wavers; he wouldn’t know how much of it is true.

Mark has passed Alice, and he makes his way down to the kitchen, hoping he’ll follow her but not daring to look. “And, besides, I don’t think it’s any of Zoe’s business, all things considered.” He doesn’t like the sound of his voice when he says Zoe’s name now: it sounds angry and it tastes bitter. He hears Alice’s footsteps tailing him, and he’s relieved. “Can I offer you a drink?”

_“Would you like a drink?” Zoe asked, leading Mark to the kitchen. Following her down the narrow staircase, towards the warm glow of the lamplight below, Mark’s heart began to stir, noisily, straining against his ribs. He felt it like an ache. He’s never felt more frivolous. He was like a teenager again. All nerves and heartbeats._

_“Uh, yes, go on then. New Years’ and all that.”_

_“White? Red?”_

_“Red, please.”_

_She had a bottle of cheapish red in the cabinet. She could have been embarrassed that all she had in was the cheap red, but she didn’t feel embarrassed with Mark. Funny, that._

_“I’m not trying to get you drunk,” Zoe laughed when she was pouring it out, “I promise.”_

“What are you drinking?” Alice asked, for she assumed rightly that he was drinking, and that the offer to her was more to gain permission to open the wine at two o’clock in the afternoon.

Mark thinks. “White,” he says, “Same for you?”

“Sure.”

There’s something cloying at the back of Mark’s throat that he hopes the wine will wash down. He pours two glasses; one larger for himself, a purely subconscious action. He barely realises he has done it. Alice notices.

“Cheers,” she says, but Mark is already drinking. That first sip is bitter and unpleasant. Alice seems him wince at it. His mouth is dry. There is still something stuck and throbbing in his throat. Again, ache-like: he is full of aches today.

He thumbs the base of the glass and watches as Alice prowls about the kitchen. She’s surveying, he thinks. Her previous visits have been brief, purposeful, but now she is at leisure. He wonders what she is thinking. What something like her might think. Whether the cool calculated gaze passing over the mantlepiece considers the precise angle she would have to push him in order to crack his skull across the woodwork. Whether her purposes for flitting through the Nigel Slater hardback is to assess its suitability for bludgeoning. Whether that flash in her eye when she catches him looking is danger. Danger or not, it scares him. And, if not danger, what?

He wants her to speak. He wants her to say something. She’s being so quiet and that’s unlike her. For the first bloody time in his life he wants Alice Morgan to say something; anything.

But she doesn’t. He feels like it’s a choice. She’s being reticent with him, he thinks, as she lifts her glass, holds it still momentarily against the light, and then deigns to drink from it. The sadness he saw in her eyes outside, he can’t see it now. He wonders if he imagined it. He almost regrets inviting her in.

Why did he invite her in?, he thinks. He dare not answer himself.

“If you’re going to speak, Mark, I wish you’d get it out. It’s quite sad watching you festering over there.”

Festering. He hadn’t noticed himself doing that. He isn’t aware that is something he does. He does want to speak; but what to say? Zoe’s been lying to me, huh? Why? How do you know, and what do you know? What about? When and for how long? Where? Where did you see them and who was it? And why was it John? Why is it always fucking John?

“Zoe… Zoe and…” That’s all his voice will allow before, manic with impatience, Alice cries, “And John! Yes! Zoe and John. Bingo. Well done, Mark, you’re not quite as dim as you look.” Her tone is tart. “Zoe and John.” She repeats it like another pinch of salt, another squeeze of that lemon, one more twist of the knife. “Always Zoe and John, eh?” Her tone is metallic. She is self-inflicting now. “John and Zoe.”

He is aware that he is in a sort of physical pain, and if she cannot cure it then she can at least drug him. Perhaps he had invited her in as an anaesthetic. If he were alone right now - God knows. Even Alice Morgan was better than alone right now.

“So, where do we start?” Alice tugs noisily at the chair opposite Mark, and throws herself down on it, “At the beginning or shall we just skip to who was on top?”

“Alice.” The name is half-warning and half-beg. It has a neediness to it that makes him cringe afterwards. “Please just,” (his head is still swimming, and he can see images now), “tell me what you know.”

“Zoe was waiting for John in his apartment when he got home from work. I’m sure she told you she was going for a walk or she’d left something at work, but no, she went to John. She waited for some time. Then John gets home. They talk. I didn’t bug the room. I can’t tell you what they said. But I can tell you where it ended up.”

“Sex?” Mark asks.

He feels like he needs it spelled out. He has to hear it.

“Sex.”

There is a moment where no one says anything. Mark’s thumb is making the glassware squeal. It makes no sense, he thinks. Or he forces himself to think. His lips mouth around for words. Finding them, he blurts, “How did she have a key?”

Alice groans, “Oh, do keep up, Mark. She’s having an affair. She knows what she’s doing.” He’s quiet at this. “Bit dim, really, Mark. Should’ve seen it coming,” she frowns.

“What do you mean?”

Alice senses him getting defensive. She enjoys that, particularly.

“That’s how you two…” Alice raises her eyebrows. Another crude suggestion. He shakes his head.

“That’s not – that’s not what we are.”

“She is still married to John, when you think about it. If anything, you’re the affair. Her and John, that’s just plain old marital sex. Why cry over spilt milk?”

“That’s not what we are,” Mark repeats.

Alice’s voice is cool when she replies, “Then what are you?”

_“What is this?”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_“This. Tonight. Isn’t this all a bit…?”_

_“A bit what?”_

_“Us together. I don’t know. I feel…”_

_“How do you feel?”_

_“Don’t be coy.”_

“We’re not a fling, Alice. We’re not just sex behind closed doors at night like…”

“Like they are?” Alice cocks an eyebrow and reclines a little. “No, I guess not. They’re married, for a start.”

“As you’ve already very helpfully pointed out, yes, thank you.”

“Something you seem to like forgetting.”

“Ah, I see. I see now, you’ve come here to bully me. Very good.” There it is again: the smell of the nosebleed. He has to do something. It’s with a certain bravado (something he’s barely capable of) that he leans forward and says, “You know, Alice, I’ve worked something out. I’ve worked out what you remind me of.”

“Please, enlighten me.”

“We had a cat. When I was a kid, we had a family cat: a silky thing, quite small, good at getting into small places, showing up where she wasn’t wanted. Always wandering off. Sometimes for days, weeks, at a time. But this cat, every time we thought she’d gone for good, we’d find a mouse at the foot of a bed. A dead mouse. Just lying there, mostly untouched, maybe mouthed a bit but in the end just left there for us. She always did it with such care, that presentation at the foot of the bed. Like a magic act. Because that’s what cats do, isn’t it? They hunt mice, bat them around, hurt them, and they take them back to us as presents. Only good when they’re dead, of course, or bleeding. Mice with their fur thick and matted in their own blood. ‘Look at me’, she’d say, bringing her dead thing in through the cat flap. ‘Look what I’ve done for you. Don’t you love me now?’”

“Where are you going with this, Mark?”

“What did he do to you?” Alice doesn’t reply this time, but something in the way her lips fold into a hard line makes Mark’s stomach swell with something triumphant. “He must have done something to you. He must have spurned you. Like a cat that’s always getting under your feet, he must have locked you out.”

“Oh, Mark. So romantic. So tedious.”

“And what do you do? You bring him more dead things, because he’ll like that. You come here and you maul me around so you can go back to John and he’ll be proud of you. Like you beating me up in the street.”

“You’re flattering yourself.”

“Oh, trust me, I’m not. I really don’t care to be your plaything. So, tell me, what did he do to you?” Mark’s hands are clasped on the tabletop now. There’s the sadness back in her eyes, he thinks. It’s icy and obscure but it’s there in her gaze as it fixes on the window behind Mark’s shoulder. “Did he hurt you that badly?”

Alice lets out a laugh. It’s humourless. “You’re so sentimental.”

_“You’re so sentimental!” Zoe laughs._

_“I don’t think that’s sentimental.”_

_“That is fucking sentimental!”_

_(They had gotten drunker.)_

_“You say sentimental, I prefer romantic.”_

_“Sure! Sure, of course you do.” She leaned across and swatted his shoulder. They had migrated to the sofa with their wine glasses. There was a lamp behind Zoe’s head and the first patters of raindrops against the window behind Mark. Zoe’s feet were bunched up against her thighs as she nestled into the crook where the arm of the sofa met the cushions. Mark was sat against the opposite arm. His knee would occasionally brush against her toes. Her heels were discarded beside the coffee table. “Bryan Adams? Are you kidding?”_

_“‘Everything I Do’ is a classic!”_

_“It’s a dirge is what it is.”_

_“No! It’s got a good story behind it. You’ve got to listen to the lyrics.”_

_“I have! I have listened! Too many times!”_

_“No, no, listen. Look into your heart.”_

_“Oh, God! Please!” Zoe groaned, burrowing her head into the crook of her elbow._

_“Look into your heart!” Mark persisted, “You will find, there’s nothing there to hide.” Zoe’s eyes peered from above her arm. “Take me as I am.” Bryan Adams, she thought, he’s flirting with me using Bryan fucking Adams. The worst of it was that it was working. “Take me as I am.”_

“It’s pathetic,” Alice says. It doesn’t sound like an insult when she says it. Rather, it’s almost pitying. What a sad thing it is not to be a psychopath.

“You can pretend you don’t feel anything. You can pretend all you like. I don’t buy it.”

_“I’ve spent so long pretending it doesn’t bother me but, Christ, it’s been really lonely. This… this is so nice. Thank you, Mark. Honestly. I needed this.”_

_“I don’t think you should have to be alone, that’s the thing. I think he’s mad. If I was…” His voice trailed into air._

_“If you were what?” Zoe was closer to him, suddenly. He didn’t know when she’d moved. Whether it had been a gradual movement or a sudden one. But when she spoke, he felt her breath. And when he turned, his eyes fell on her lips._

“You want the truth, Mark?” Alice asks. She feels his unease. She’s bored. “You’re right. John did hurt me. ‘Hurt me’ is your words; I prefer to say he pissed me off. No biggie. I’m a big girl. But it was enough to make me angry. So that’s why I came to find you. But that’s where your story goes off course. You see I didn’t come here to hurt you. You’re not my dead mouse. Not now, no.”

“No? Then why?”

“Revenge sex.” Mark’s jaw goes slack. His words sink down his throat. It is the first time he is truly speechless in this strange dialogue they’re in. “If we’re being really honest with each other now, that’s why I’m here.”

“You...?”

“I came here wondering if you wanted a shag.”

He barely knows if she’s serious. He barely cares to find out. He’s truly fucked now, he thinks. There’s a heady chill in the air. He realises he’s shivering; he doesn’t know when this begun.

“Very funny.” It’s a defence mechanism that makes him talk.

“Is that so unbelievable?”

“Yes, actually. It is.”

“Why? Isn’t that what adults do?”

“What adults do?”

“We’re a man and a woman, alone. We’ve been drinking. We’re both angry, and probably more than a little frustrated. And, to flatter ourselves for a teeny moment, we're quite attractive, the pair of us. So, we take advantage of the situation.” She speaks of it forensically. Like one speaks of a supernova. The speed of two cosmic objects hurtling inexorably towards each other through space. It is an algorithm to her.

This algorithm has an answer that, at this moment, Mark doesn’t feel strong enough to prevent.

“You were the one who invited me in, Mark. Remember that.”

_“Are you sure about this, Zoe? Is this what you want?” Mark asked her, breathless. It was never in doubt, really. This was inevitable from the moment he gave in and followed her through the door. Her kisses were hot on his neck and her reply (yes, yes, yes) was insistent in his ear. There was never a hesitation with Mark._

“Don’t you want to?” Alice asks, “Haven’t you thought about it? Just a little?”

He had. Of course, he’d thought about it. He’d dated a redhead at Uni; Alice made him think of her. Even from that first meeting, Alice Morgan – in his mind – was knotted up with bowls of ricicles and 3ams and the old beaten up sofa in his student digs. Something exciting, malnourished, young: a first time. Something you scramble for but can’t get back.

So, yes. He had thought about it. He’s thinking about it now. God knows he’s thinking about it. As her gaze darkens, he thinks about it. He thinks about it to chase Zoe out of his mind. He thinks about it because John would hate it. He thinks about it when he thinks of John and Zoe together. He thinks about it because to think about it would maybe take the pain away. Just for a moment, maybe.

He thinks; he thinks even as Alice slowly stands, fixing her gaze steadily on him and, panther-like, walks around the table, and towards where he is sat. It is instinct that makes him push his chair back; makes him face her. Soon enough Alice is standing above him. For a moment, haloed by her hair, it is easy for Mark to forget who she is.

It’s less easy to forget himself.

He’s bleary-eyed again when her fingers tighten on the back of his neck. A scrape of pain on his scalp as she holds him hard only makes him stifle a groan. She takes the lead, knowing that he won’t. He almost talks; but doesn’t in the end. Her grip softens.

He is hesitant. He twitches away like he doesn’t want to be touched but when she leans her head down, he kisses her lips desperately. He’s out of his seat in pursuit of her lips. The press of him against her cries: don’t leave, don’t disappear, not yet. It’s pathetic, really, but it’s quite charming to have someone so needy. His body repels and draws; he’s like a tide spilling over just as soon as he has drawn back.

He’d told her to get herself an exorcist and, as the movement of her hand draws a keening sigh from his parted lips, he begins to fear that this exorcist is him.

His hesitancy breaks. He splits open.

_He forgot she was married as his body moved slowly over hers in the lowlight. So did she._

Alice sits on the table and he fucks her. It’s hard and sudden and unsatisfying. Shuddering down from the high, he feels sick.

_Zoe’s thigh pressed against his cheek and the sound she made. It was beautiful._

“What do we do now?”

Mark is sat back at the table. He pants. His cheeks are flushed. He has the look of one shell-shocked. Alice is readjusting her skirt. She looks as cool as she had done before. One side of her hair is messed where his hand had grasped her in the heat of some desperate lonely fervour, but she is quick to smooth it out again. She hadn’t said anything. She laughs, though. Mark isn’t sure why. He isn’t sure he wants to know why.

“We make sure that this stays our little secret. You sit down here and wait for Zoe to get home. She’ll probably cry and apologise and you’ll be playing happy families again before the end of the week.”

He can’t shake that nausea. He feels like he might throw up.

“God, Alice, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...”

“Sweet of you.”

This is not revenge; this is winning.

Alice leaves. Zoe is in his head again. Mark cries.

_“What do we do now?”_

_Zoe shrugged, “I don’t know. I don’t care. I like being here right now.”_

_“Yeah?” Mark replied with a wry grin, “Yeah, so do I.”_

Mark hears Zoe’s key in the door. There is a pain in his head. He waits for her to come downstairs. He hears her before he sees her. She comes through the door and, when she looks at him, he notices that her eyes are sad.

**Author's Note:**

> First Luther fic. Powered by an extreme love of Mark North. I don’t know how ooc this might be - but I thought it might be an interesting little addition to this episode. Mark and Alice have such a great relationship; I love them.
> 
> Do let me know your thoughts below.


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